“Don’t, Dick,” she said in a very shaky voice. “It is too much—too much—happiness. I am afraid of it. We are too happy.”
He put his arms round her and held her tight.
“Dear goose,” he said, “shall I beat you, or make love to some one else? Would that make you more comfortable in your darling, foolish mind? This is the ‘happy ever after’ part of the story. What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” said Helen, laughing. “Oh, Dick, my hair—I shall have to do it again. Captain Carlton is such a perfectly neat and proper person, that I couldn’t possibly go out riding with him unless I were perfectly neat and proper too, and the horses will be round in a minute. Are you ready?”
“Have you given me a chance?” said Richard. “No, seriously, you will have to go without me to-day, I can’t spare the time. Look at this pile of papers. The people at headquarters are possessed by a positively indecent spirit of curiosity at present. They want to know everything that has happened in the Urzeepore district, from the Flood downwards, and by the time I have collected information as to the grandfathers and grandmothers of all my villagers, I shall get back an official request for the names, ages, sexes, and pedigrees of the grandmothers’ cats. And if I don’t answer all the questions very nicely, they won’t make me a Commissioner.”
“Oh, Dick, have you heard anything?”
“A line from Hazelton—private, of course. He says they will give me the next district that is going. Shall you like to be Mrs. Commissioner and Lady Morton by and by?”
“I’d like you to be Sir Richard,” said Helen, and her eyes shone. Then she put one arm round his neck and whispered:
“Don’t be too ambitious, Dick.” “Why not, child? It is all for you.” “And I don’t care—not a bit, except for you. I should be just as happy, and just as proud of you, if you were a stone-breaker, and I had to bring you your dinner in a red-spotted cotton handkerchief every day at twelve o’clock, and you beat me on Saturday nights when you brought the wages home.”
“Or you beat me, when I didn’t bring’ em—eh? Undiscriminating young female. I’d much rather not break stones if you don’t mind. Do go away, Helen. I shall never get done.”
“You are sure you can’t come out?”
“Quite sure, my child. Run away, and tidy yourself and have a nice ride!”
“Really, Dick, I’m not ten years old!”
“Then you shouldn’t have your hair hanging down. It misleads people. Give me a kiss and fly.”
She bent over to kiss him, and her eye was caught by a line in the letter he had been writing.
“Dick, I couldn’t help seeing,” she said in a startled voice.
“What?”
“Your letter. Why do you say—‘I have received no reliable intelligence of the presence of any white woman in this district’?”
Richard hesitated.
“I am sorry you saw it, dear,” he said. “They have got an idea. There have been rumours—you know they have never stopped trying to trace Miss Wheeler.”
“Dick, I thought she was dead. I thought they were sure of it now.”
Helen’s voice was low and horrified.
“No, they are not sure,” said Richard Morton.
“Oh, Dick—how—how dreadful!”
He put his arm round her.
“All this time,” said Helen faintly.
Then after a pause she asked:
“Have they heard of her, of any one, near here?”
“There have been continual rumours, first from one part of Oude, then from another. Child, don’t look like that. I don’t believe in the tales myself, and—even if they were true, in the present state of the country, no one would dare to keep her against her will.”
Helen exclaimed sharply:
“She couldn’t! Oh, Dick!”
Richard Morton spoke in a hard, unwilling voice.
“Helen, you must realise there was only one condition under which any woman could have saved herself from the Cawnpore Massacre. If she had accepted a native husband—if there were a child—what would she, what could she ask, but to be left alone, to be thought dead? What could be more horribly cruel than to drag her back to publicity—gossip—all the newspapers ringing with her story?”
He broke off in strong distaste, and Helen shuddered.
“If it had been I—” she whispered against his cheek, and felt his grasp tighten until it hurt her.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” he commanded roughly. “It could never have been you. There was always a choice—always death.” After a moment he got up, and pulled her to her feet.
“Helen, you are a morbid goose,” he said resolutely. “Go and tidy yourself. Freddy wouldn’t be seen with you as you are. Be off, and please don’t come back until I have got through with this pile of papers. There. Are you good?”
“Moderately,” said Helen with a shaky smile. Then she ran away to her room.
When she came out upon the verandah in five minutes’ time, Freddy Carlton was waiting for her, very spick and span. He had not altered at all since he and Richard had talked together on the night of Hetty Lavington’s ball. He had kept his air of cheerful irresponsibility, just as he had kept his freckles, his sandy hair, and his affection for Richard Morton. Now he found himself extending this affection to Richard’s wife.
They rode away, and Helen exclaimed at the sharpness of the air. Urzeepore in December could be cold, and she was glad of her thick cloth habit. They cantered, to warm themselves, and presently, when they drew rein again, Freddy’s talk was of Dick and the good times they had had together.
Helen found this very pleasant. Her heart warmed to dapper little Freddy, and she beamed on him in a sisterly manner which he thought highly agreeable.
After they had skirted the cantonment, they turned back, and followed the high-road which ran past the native city.
The road was bordered by dark tamarisk trees and straggling mimosa bushes, bloomless now. In another month or six weeks, the highways and the crossways would be full of the clinging scent of the clustered yellow blossoms.
To and fro in the dust went the country people, and Helen stopped talking to watch them as they passed—men with dark blankets over their heads, and women lightly veiled, with a barefoot child at their swinging skirts.
A group of very brightly-dressed women went by chattering. They were bold and handsome of face, and not too closely veiled for the fact to be evident. They wore tight bodices and embroidered jackets and gowns of red and green kharua cloth. One or two had a very high wooden horn on the head, over which the cloth veil fell down in heavy, graceful folds. All were festooned with innumerable beads, cowries, tassels, and brightly-coloured cords, and their arms were covered with bangles made of horn or brass. Every brown finger had its ring of silver, brass, or lead.
“Who are these?” asked Helen.
Freddy Carlton settled his glass into his eye, peered at them, and answered:
“Banjaras; sort of gipsies. Fine, big, upstanding women, aren’t they, Mrs. Morton? They beat their husbands, I’m told. Regular amazons according to Smith-Bullton, who is my authority.”
Behind the Banjara women a palanquin was jogging along very slowly. There was a little wind abroad, and it stirred up the dust, and blew it about. Freddy Carlton contemplated it with disfavour.
“We can strike off here, and get out of the crowd,” he said, and turned his horse, Helen following him.
Just as she passed the palanquin, a sudden gust blew out the faded curtains and a hand came from between their folds and caught at them to pull them in. Helen rode on for about fifty yards. Then she turned to Captain Carlton, and said abruptly:
“I must go back.”
“But I think this is really our shortest way, Mrs. Morton.”
“No—I don’t mean home. I
want to go back. I must see where that janpan goes to.”
Freddy stared.
“What, that one we passed just now? What is it, Mrs. Morton?”
Helen was rather pale. Her eyes had a frightened look.
“Captain Carlton—you’ll think me very foolish, I’m afraid, but just now when the wind blew the curtains of the palanquin—”
“Yes?”
“The woman inside put up her hand to hold them together. I only saw part of it—three fingers—but—they were white.”
They looked at each other. Then Freddy tried to laugh.
“Oh, come, Mrs. Morton,” he said, but Helen insisted.
“Didn’t Dick tell you? They really do think that there is a white woman somewhere about here. Dick had a letter to-day—he was answering it when I came out. We must go back. I shall never forget it, if we don’t.”
Freddy began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“It was probably a Kashmiri woman. They are very fair. But if you feel disturbed, let us make for home, and you can tell Richard, and then let him see about it.”
“It wasn’t a Kashmiri,” said Helen, with a shrinking look. “It wasn’t really, I must go back. It will be too late if we wait, and I can’t let you go alone either. I am coming. I must come.”
They rode back in silence.
There was no sign of the palanquin upon the road before them. They rode towards the city, and presently Freddy stopped a native and questioned him.
“It has gone down there, to the native serai,” he said. “Really, Mrs. Morton, you can’t go there after it. I couldn’t let you. It’s not a fit place. Dick wouldn’t like it Do go home, and let him make the proper inquiries.”
Helen shook her head.
“I can’t,” she said. “Please don’t think me very obstinate,” and she tried to smile. “Please don’t, Captain Carlton, but I just can’t go home without seeing the woman for myself.”
They turned into a narrow, dirty lane, between two rows of rickety houses with little gimcrack balconies that leaned together and seemed about to fall. At the far end, the courtyard of the serai opened. A small crowd of gaping loafers who were collected about the gate stared widely at the unwonted sight of a sahib and memsahib drawing up before the native rest house.
Again did Captain Carlton question, and receive voluble answers.
“Oh, yes, a palanquin had arrived. There was a woman in it. She had gone in there”—half a dozen hands pointed to one of the ramshackle doors that opened upon the courtyard. No, nobody knew where she came from. No, she had had no servant, and her palanquin bearers were not here. They had run away at once, as if they were frightened. God knew what had frightened them. Nobody else knew anything. The bearers said they knew nothing about the woman, they had only brought her one stage, from Ghara. Then they ran away as if the devil were at their heels. Who knows why they ran? Helen slipped from her saddle. She was behind Captain Carlton’s back, and he did not see her. He was leaning over and talking to the men. She had heard enough. She left the reins hanging, and ran on tingling feet across the trodden mud of the yard, and before Freddy Carlton realised what she meant to do, she had disappeared behind the door to which the natives had pointed.
CHAPTER XXIX
MRS. MORTON
Where have you been this long, long time?
I have been dead,
With the stone of forgetfulness at my feet,
And the naming stone at my head.
Why did you come from the grave again?
Our tears were shed. You should have slept till the Judgment Day,
You who are dead.
Helen shut the door behind her quickly because she did not wish Freddy Carlton to follow her, and at first the place was so dark that she could see nothing.
Six feet up in the wall beside the door there was a small square window with no glass in it. A little light came in through this, and as Helen’s eyes grew accustomed to the dusk, she made out the opposite wall of the room, a native string bed pushed against it, and a white form huddled upon the bed in a crouching position. Little by little, details began to emerge from the gloom. The form was a woman’s form, and it was covered from head to foot with a coarse white sheet. One fold of the sheet was shaking, as if it were being held together by a shaking hand.
Helen took her hand off the latch, and moved away from the door. As she did so, the light from the window fell on her, and she saw the woman on the bed lift the corner of the sheet that shook, and look from under it. There was a gasping sound. Then Helen forced herself to speak. It was too dreadful. She must get it over.
“I came—I saw your hand—who—who are you?”
Helen was never quite sure if she heard her own name or not. She never could quite recollect anything, except that her heart began to throb loudly and painfully, and that the woman began to fumble with the sheet that covered her. Her hands were very hesitating and feeble. Helen’s only clear impression was the horrible one that this was a corpse struggling to release itself from a shroud. Her own flesh chilled momentarily. Then the sheet fell back, and it was dead Adela whom she saw only two yards away from her in the dusk.
The shock was so great, so sudden, so overwhelming, that Helen could feel nothing at all. She leaned against the mud wall behind her, and felt the ground waver, waver beneath her feet. Her eyes looked at Adela, and saw thin, hectic cheeks, hollow eyes, and a head shorn of all its chestnut curls. Adela’s lips were moving piteously, but the noise in Helen’s ears was too loud to let her hear.
Suddenly it ceased, and a chill, deadly quiet came instead. From beating violently, her heart seemed to have stopped beating altogether. From a state of wild confusion her brain passed to one of clear and cold decision.
“Adela,” she said in a quiet, intense voice; and Adela shuddered into a sob.
“Oh, Helen!” she said. “Helen— don’t look at me like that. Helen, don’t!”
“Hush!” said Helen sharply.
Both women heard a man’s footsteps; it came close to the door, and Freddy Carlton called aloud:
“Mrs. Morton.”
Adela made a shrinking movement, and reached for her veil, but Helen went quickly to the door. She opened it a little, and stood in the gap.
“Will you wait, please,” she said in a low voice.
Freddy peered at her, glass in eye. He looked much disturbed.
“What is it? Good heavens!”
“Please.” Helen put out her hand. “I have had—a shock. It is some one—I used—to know. Will you get bearers for the palanquin? I must take her away from here.”
“Who is it?” asked Captain Carlton in an agitated whisper, singularly unlike his usual placid tones.
“I think I had better not say yet.”
Helen spoke very slowly. It mattered so intensely what she said, what she did. For Dick’s sake—for Dick’s sake. Her brain was working all the time, but she had not begun to feel. It was as if some one had struck her heart a very heavy blow, and stunned it. There was no feeling there. Only when Dick’s name passed through her mind, the numbness yielded, and was shot with little quivering pains. No, she must not begin to think of Dick. Not yet. She looked so ghastly that Captain Carlton blurted out:
“Are you going to faint?”
“Oh, no.”
Helen actually smiled. Then she turned and went back, shutting the door behind her.
“Helen, aren’t you glad—to see me?” said Adela. It was quite her old fretful voice, but so weak.
Helen looked at her in silence.
She had gathered the veil about her again, and with her shorn head covered, she looked less horribly unlike the Adela of the old days. There was a high flush on her cheeks, and her eyes were brilliant under the beautiful arched brows.
“Tell me,” said Helen, standing against the wall.
Her long green habit fell about her feet. Her hat had fallen back. Her face showed pale and stern against it.
“What do you mean? Oh, Helen, how unkind you are. If you knew what I have been through. Any one would be sorry for me.”
Helen’s lips moved stiffly as if they were going to smile. Very stiffly she closed them again.
“You haven’t changed, Adie,” she said in a queer voice.
“My hair must make a great difference,” said Adela feebly. “And I am very ill. My heart is bad—I faint—often; and I have had dysentery for weeks and weeks. That is why I am so thin. And they didn’t give me enough to eat after the baby died. Anunda—she was the only one who was friendly—she said they wanted me to die too. I shouldn’t wonder. I shouldn’t wonder if they had put powdered glass in my food, so as to give me dysentery. They do do things like that, you know. I didn’t know before, but now I do.”
Helen put one hand over the other and dug her nails deep into the palm.
“Who were—they—Adela?” she managed to say.
“Frank’s mother—and her relations. I think she is half mad. She only thinks about her prayers. Oh, you don’t know what it has been.”
“Frank?”
“Frank Manners. You must remember him, Helen, and how much in love with me he always was. He saved my life that awful day at the ghaut. Helen, don’t look so—when Richard was dead, and every one, what could I do except marry him? He was always very devoted to me.”
Helen repeated four words mechanically: “When Richard was dead.”
Adela bridled.
“Of course under other circumstances I should have waited a year. At least a year. I have always said a year was the least. You remember, Helen, I said so to you often in Cawnpore, when we thought that Richard was dead. I said I should insist on waiting eighteen months, though poor Richard and I—well, you know that he never really understood me, though I think he meant to be kind.”
The tears came up in Adela’s eyes, flooding their brilliance. Her voice faltered.
“As things were—I had no choice. Helen, you do see it—I couldn’t help doing it. Helen!”
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